The Corrupt (Re)generation of the Californian Desert in The Octopus by Frank Norris

Abstract

Critics have often explored The Octopus as a muckraking novel which exposed the hypocrisy and greed of American society at the turn of the twentieth century. While it does pit the ranchers against the railroad company as a political backdrop, the novel mainly investigates the power of nature to renew itself, as an alternative motif that allows for regeneration. The desert in which the story unfolds provides a tabula rasa, but also alludes to the instability of nature which follows its own whims. Throughout the novel, the Californian space is ambiguously depicted both as a barren land and as a promising desert thanks to its irrepressible wheat crops compared to a womb. This former desert only offers a tainted regeneration. The breaks and breaches in the desert partake in the ambiguous comment on corruption as they allow it to seep into the ranches and precipitate their own downfall; but these breaks are also lines of flight in the midst of a deterministic structure and repetitive formulations which seem to entrap the characters. The instability and geological fault on which this corrupted desert lies also opens up the genealogical fault that disrupts the ranchers’ lineage as they are directly affected by the contaminating effect of the corruption which befalls them. These geological and genealogical faults which permeate the Californian desert allude to language’s own failure at keeping control over the characters’ fates. By exploring these faults, the novel’s language also participates in the creative renewal of nature and writing.